‘Size Of Wales’ on Target to Save Two Million Hectares Of Rainforest

Wales is often used by the media as an indicator of size when talking about rainforest loss. Which is why a dedicated group of Welsh environmentalists got together to meet the challenge of raising cash to protect an area of rainforest ‘the size of Wales’. And they've done it, generating an impressive £2 million in just three years.

Members of the public contributed more than a million pounds to the fund and their efforts were matched by the Waterloo Foundation, a Cardiff-based charitable trust. Now the charity is on track to protect more than two million hectares of forest, mainly in Africa, for future generations and the benefit of the planet as a whole.

Securing land rights, protected areas and conservation projects

The money raised will be used to support twenty projects designed to secure community land rights, special protected areas and community forest conservation projects, with a small amount of re-afforestation on the cards too. The organisers, Size of Wales, also plan to stick around in the longer term to help keep the land safe. And they also aim to carry on educating people in Wales itself about their impact on rainforests and promoting the initiative in the longer term.

‘Size of’ campaigns on the cards for Denmark, Ireland and Europe?

The campaign has been so successful that there’s more of the same on the cards, with new projects currently being discussed in Denmark and Ireland. But the Wales campaign’s organisers have a bigger ambition: to see the people of Europe raising funds to protect a chunk of rainforest the size of the entire continent.

Deforestation drives the same emissions as the planet’s entire transport system

As much According to Hannah Scrase, one of the tiny Llanidloes-based charity’s organisers, “Tropical forest deforestation amounts to as much carbon emissions as the world's transport” – something very few people realise. The more rainforest we can protect and save, the fewer deforestation-influenced carbon emissions the human race will need to deal with.